The Silver Bell is an overdrive circuit which has its roots in the mid ‘70s Maxon D&S II. Imagine a TS808 with some hard clipping germanium diode flavor - that’s the foundational character of the original D&S II circuit.

The Silver Bell expands on that basic circuit in several ways:

- I’ve opted for a Burr Brown OPA2134 opamp for increased fidelity in the lows & mids

- Diode clipping comes from a pair of Telefunken OA172 germanium diodes

- I’ve added individual EQ controls for Depth and Presence. The interaction of these knobs lets you dial in varying shades of depth, midrange presence, and treble cut.

- The gain pot introduces distortion very gradually: up to 12 o’clock is very lightly overdriven, 12 to 3 o’clock gives increasingly grittier overdrive reminiscent of dirty Tweed or early EF86-preamp Vox amps. The highest gain settings introduce more high end distortion and buzz, but with surprisingly low levels of compression in the low end.

The Silver Bell isn’t your typical mid-focused, compressed, TS style overdrive… it’s character is loose, open, dynamic, and slightly raw with grit & hair in the high mids when opened up.